The new book is dedicated to Matthew’s late father, Michael Palmer, MD, the author of Miracle Cure, Critical Judgment, Silent Treatment, Natural Causes, Extreme Measures, Flashback, Side Effects, and The Sisterhood, to name a few. Michael Palmer’s books have been translated into thirty languages. The 1991 thriller Extreme Measures starring Hugh Grant, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Gene Hackman is based on his novel of the same name.

After many years, Sam Trainor has left his Foreign Service job, trading his place as a South Asia analyst for the U.S. government for the same desk at Argus Security, a Beltway Bandit consulting firm. The reason for the move is simple: bypassed for promotion, Trainor, brilliant but a bit unbridled, knew his government career was dead in the water. Though none to comfortable with the reality that consultants have taken over far too much power in the running of the government, he sees the writing on the wall. And why not do the same work for twice the pay?

But working for Argus is different in ways that have nothing to do with salary. No longer sworn to uphold the constitution of the United States, Trainor now answers to corporate masters. So his options are less straightforward when he stumbles upon some Intel that points to a plan to upend the tenuous balance between India and Pakistan. Complicating things, one of the participants in the intercepted phone conversation is Vanalika Chandra, political counselor at the Indian Embassy in Washington—and, not incidentally, Trainor’s adulterous lover. For the veteran analyst, nothing about this sits right.

As Trainor and his team dig deeper for the source of this dangerous misinformation, it quickly becomes apparent that, left unchecked, it could lead to nuclear war. As the riveting plot unfolds—from the Beltway and the Pentagon to Mumbai and Lahore—Trainor will come to the troubling conclusion that his employer’s involvement—and motives—may not align with his own hard won view of the way the global politics should be conducted. And as the clock ticks, he must suss out a truth that will prevent the world from changing forever.

Matthew Palmer is a twenty-year veteran of the U.S. Foreign Service, currently serving as the Director of Multilateral Affairs in the State Department’s Bureau of Asian and Pacific Affairs. A life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, he has worked as a diplomat around the world. While on the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff, Palmer helped design and implement the Kimberley Process for certifying African diamonds as “conflict free,” expertise he drew on in writing his debut novel, The American Mission.

His third book already has a title — The Wolf of Sarajevo. It is set in the Balkans where he spent a good chunk of his Foreign Service career.